FEATURE: The Regents: A Guide

First Meeting: January 16, 1865


Meets: Two days every other month. Generally, winter meetings are in the Las Vegas Valley, and summer meetings are in Elko, Carson City or Reno


Membership: 13, elected to six-year terms. Board has periodically been expanded during redistricting


Salaries: Regents work for free.


Mission: Oversee the administration of Nevada's higher education institutions


Budget: $1,282,286,578 for 2003-2005

The fallout from this winter carries over at this week's regents meeting (Thursday and Friday, 3rd floor, Desert Research Institute, Flamingo at Swenson), and the proceedings could be entertaining as always. The board will likely continue discussion on the tuition overcharges that first came to light in January. Expect impassioned debate from those who want to refund students their money immediately.

Also on tap will be discussion of issues related to conduct of CCSN employees, and how they relate to the Legislature, in an effort to prevent the Remington/Cummings debacle from happening again.

A late addition to this week's agenda is the hiring of Lon Kruger as UNLV's basketball coach. UNLV officials said the job wasn't offered to Kruger until Sunday, but the item to approve Kruger's contract was put on the agenda last week. This could turn into a debacle of epic proportions—the trainwreck of UNLV basketball colliding with the circus of the Board of Regents.

"It's never been this contentious," said Regent Jill Derby, whose 15 years on the board is the longest tenure of any current regent. "It could be individual personalities that exacerbate it, in the way individuals communicate it. It's such a lack of civility and respect that gets expressed and communicated."

What went wrong that the public board that oversees Nevada's higher education has become one of the most interesting public boards to watch?

First and foremost, debate often turns into a referendum on personalities, rather than issues. Secondly, many veteran regents don't like the style of chairman Stavros Anthony, who was elected to the board in 2002 and ascended to the chairmanship last summer.

"I like Stavros, I think he's an asset for the board, but I don't know if somebody that's only been on the board for a year can be chair,'' Steve Sisolak said. "Because of time constraints, a lot of people cannot be chair. For me, it's way too much time. You need some history and some experience in order to make people feel more included. I think you have individual board members ... feeling excluded from the process."

Anthony's predecessor, Las Vegas businessman Doug Seastrand, said it's unfair to solely blame Anthony. "I think he's doing as good a job as he's capable of doing, and he handles a lot of administrative things at the police department. He's a very capable leader, and I truly believe he's doing the best he knows how," Seastrand said. "Could he have benefited from more experience before he became the chair? Probably."

Sisolak said some regents believe Anthony hands out committee chairmanships based on friendship, rather than experience. "You've got Linda [Howard] for example, she hasn't chaired a committee, and she's been on the board for four years," Sisolak said. "Other people are on the board maybe for a year, [they] are chairing a committee. Not that they're not capable, but it needs to be passed around a little bit, responsibilities need to be split."

Anthony said that because there's only four committees, chairmanship opportunities are limited. "I'd like somebody to tell me why they were not handed out fairly," said Anthony, a captain in Metro's vice squad. "When I run a meeting, I try to make sure that it's done fairly, that people are treated with respect. Unfortunately, there's other regents that don't treat each other with respect."

Reno Regent Howard Rosenberg, a UNR art professor, said that board members, himself included, takes things personally.

"The one thing I have learned is, when you're a member of a board, once a decision is made, while I may not be waving the flag, I'm not going to try to sabotage it," Rosenberg said. "The majority has acted. I don't agree with the majority all the time, but that's life.

"If you can feel inside of you that the person that disagrees with you, this is how they really feel, I don't have a problem with it," Rosenberg continues. "What I have a problem with is when I suspect there's an ulterior motive. ... I just need to be comfortable knowing that you've done the right thing."

Anthony calls respect and dissent a byproduct of democracy.

"You get 13 people, with 13 backgrounds, 13 opinions, and things do get contentious," the chairman said. "That's a part of democracy. If this was totalitarian, one person would be in charge and that would be the end of it."

Some regents acknowledge that the drama is no different than with other elected boards, from legislatures to homeowners associations. "I think that other boards just take their discord behind closed doors. They're not subject to the open meeting law the way we are," Sisolak said. "For a board of this size, we don't have caucuses, so any time we get together, it's an open meeting, so most of our disputes are done in public. While it might not make us look real together on some issues, I think the public has an opportunity to see firsthand exactly how the system operates."

State Sen. Dina Titus noted that "in the legislature, when caucuses meet, they are not bound by open meeting law. Maybe they do air their laundry a little more privately in the legislative caucuses."

Rosenberg said that the open meeting law not only fosters foot-in-mouth disease, but also unnecessarily lengthy discussions. and prevents regents from resolving conflicts outside of meetings. But with the open meeting law unlikely to change anytime soon, conflicts remain.

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Orangutangate—late 2002

Regent Linda Howard looked up the records of at least two UNLV students, including a columnist for the student paper, the Rebel Yell, who'd called her an "idiot." Those disapproving of Howard's actions were silenced after Regent Mark Alden called Howard an "orangutan" on a local radio show, and Howard's supporters turned the debate over Howard's ethics into the board's "systematic racism." The regents collectively apologized without acknowledging any wrongdoing.

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Tenure flap—March 2003

At a meeting in Carson City, a group of UNLV professors was nominated for tenure. Regent Linda Howard argued the nomination of one—Rainier Spencer, who was in favor of raising the minimum entrance GPA at UNLV, something Howard opposed. Regents Steve Sisolak and Doug Hill used a quick parliamentary maneuver to pass Spencer's tenure without debate.

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New Chair—June 2003

The board unanimously voted in new regent Stavros Anthony as chair and new regent Marcia Bandera as vice chair. Neither had been on the board for more than a year. Many have openly questioned Anthony's ability to manage the board effectively without experience, and some accuse him of taking orders from University and Community College System of Nevada Chief Administrator Jane Nichols.

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UNLV Student Union—October 2003

After months of discussion, the board in August approved a new fee for UNLV students to fund the construction of a new student union and recreation center. This upset some regents, because the August meeting was in Reno. The board agreed to revisit the issue at October's meeting in Las Vegas. Some expected throngs of opposing students to show, voicing their anger over a new fee that would cap out at more than $150 per semester. But the board bungled the public comment segment, prompting Alden to walk out of the meeting spewing diatribe comparing the board to "Communist Russia."

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CCSN President—November 2003

After a lengthy closed-door meeting, the board demoted CCSN President Ron Remington and lobbyist John Cummings without offering them the opportunity to respond to the allegations made against them. Some saw it as a power-grab by Anthony and Nichols, who were reportedly displeased with Remington's efforts to offer four-year programs at CCSN without the Board's approval. Allegations of open-meeting-law violations abounded, prompting Alden to file a complaint against his own board. The board revisited the issue in December, but would not rescind its previous action by a 7-6 vote. This month, Remington got word that his request to transfer to UNLV was rejected by Nichols, despite his claims of approval from UNLV President Carol Harter.

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Tuition Overcharges—January 2004

Board of Regents policy, enacted in 1995, said a student had to live in Nevada for a year before enrolling in college to get resident-rate tuition. Nevada Revised Statues dictated six months. The issue turned the board's January meeting into a spectacle of accusations and frustration when a board member modified a motion to refund tuition, proposing to delay refunds to students who had overpaid in the past. Board lawyers are looking into the statute of limitations on the refunds, as well as the financial implications of paying back not only students, but the federal government, for student aid was also overcharged.

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Nevada State College at Henderson

Nevada State College opened in 2002, after a fierce debate over whether it was needed—a debate that rages to this day. Asked what the best thing the board is doing right now, Regent Mark Alden said, "Supporting the state college and getting it to where it needed to go and proving to a lot of naysayers that it was the right thing to do. The success of the state college, and the Boyd School of Law, I think those are two huge accomplishments and neither one was very easy to get to. We need a three-tiered system. If we didn't have that state college today, you'd be facing capped enrollments at UNLV."

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Campus Development

The Board of Regents is faced with a special challenge: meet the needs of Nevada's students through this period of growth while keeping tuition relatively low. The board tries to manage campus growth as best it can without raising tuition too much—Nevada's resident undergrad tuition is second-lowest in the West.

Facilities at colleges in Carson City and Elko have experienced just as much growth as their big-city counterparts. The board puts under a microscope projects funded by student fees, even when students vote in favor of fee hikes.

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Community Outreach

Earlier this month at the West Las Vegas Arts Center, some of the most influential voices in higher education in Nevada met to discuss what can be done to get more minorities into and through Silver State colleges. The forum was one of several outreach forums hosted by Regent Linda Howard and brought together community activists, lawmakers, university representatives and also four university regents and the system's chancellor.